Crispy a 1989 LS Swapped Long Bed Dually

[88mjsally]

Got my new Speedmaster LS6 intake in today. Looks really nice and hopefully will clear the hood

[88mjsally]

Acquired a year old QuickDraw LS to AX15 adapter kit from one of my buddies. It uses a stock 6.0 clutch setup and flywheel which are on order as well as the pilot bearing 

[neohic]

Very rad! Whats the gear ratio in the new rear axle?

[88mjsally]

23 hours ago, neohic said:

Very rad! Whats the gear ratio in the new rear axle?

Pretty sure it is 3.55 which matches the front but I need to pop it open and check as it doesn’t have a tag on it. Worst case I’ll just regear the front to match whatever the rear is 

[88mjsally]

Old 4.0 is out as of this morning and I got the engine bay cleaned up. Novak engine mounts are installed. Going to bolt the ax15 up to the engine tomorrow hopefully and get it set in its new home

[88mjsally]

Had a few issues today. The QuickDraw kit is designed for the newer AX15 and won’t work with out of the box stuff with the older one from what I see. Luckily I had a backup plan which was the factory manual zj. After looking more it’s a rusty pos so I no longer feel bad about pulling the trans out of it. Going to clean it up tomorrow and hopefully get it bolted up to

the engine. Clutch is on and one of the perks of this QuickDraw kit is it uses all off the shelf parts which will help down the road

[88mjsally]

Mostly cleaned the transmission and transfer case up today. Didn’t do a great job but they are under the truck so it’ll be okay. Got it all bolted up to the engine and hopefully I’ll be able to set it in tomorrow 

[coheed]

4 hours ago, 88mjsally said:

Mostly cleaned the transmission and transfer case up today. Didn’t do a great job but they are under the truck so it’ll be okay. Got it all bolted up to the engine and hopefully I’ll be able to set it in tomorrow 

I'd venture a guess that this drive line is cleaner than most sitting in MJs across the country lol. When I get the AX15 in my truck I definitely need to make my way down to check this thing out. Absolutely loving this build.

[88mjsally]

8 hours ago, coheed said:

I'd venture a guess that this drive line is cleaner than most sitting in MJs across the country lol. When I get the AX15 in my truck I definitely need to make my way down to check this thing out. Absolutely loving this build.

I did a really good job cleaning the engine, the rest not so much but oh well you’re probably right lol. Come on down, I moved since last time I saw you so I’m about an hour closer

[88mjsally]

Took a little massaging but the engine is in and it fits really well overall. Just had to massage the firewall some for the bellhousing which I pretty much expected

[88mjsally]

Got the gm pcm mounted in the oem Renix location with help from a PSI conversions universal mount. Fits really well overall. Still working on the wiring and next up is mounting the aftermarket fuse block under the hood 

[88mjsally]

Been steady making progress the last couple days. Got the wiring harness pretty much buttoned up and all nicely wrapped with woven wrap. Fuse block is installed and almost all the way wired up. Got the aftermarket steam crossover on since the truck one hit the intake. Bypassed the heater core for now. Eventually I need to pull the dash again and replace the heater core and ac evaporator when I come back and add ac. I was going to order the Novak headers because I didn’t want to deal with fitment issues but the $800 price for coated ones was hard to justify. I ended up ordering 2 sets of Chinese eBay ls swap headers for about $200. The welds are actually surprisingly decent as is the overall quality. They fit really nicely as well, just need to order a different collector adapter for the passengers one as the o2 bung is in an annoying spot that hits everything no matter how it’s oriented

[88mjsally]

Front accessories arrived yesterday and hopefully I can start getting them installed today. I went with a corvette style power steering pump setup from ICT Billet which I’ve seen other people use so hopefully it will clear everything. Also got the fuel injector spacers I ordered to use the oem vortec truck injectors 

[Comanche SS]

11 hours ago, 88mjsally said:

Front accessories arrived yesterday and hopefully I can start getting them installed today. I went with a corvette style power steering pump setup from ICT Billet which I’ve seen other people use so hopefully it will clear everything. Also got the fuel injector spacers I ordered to use the oem vortec truck injectors 

Probably the same kit I went with from ICT.

If so, the power steering pulley will be too close to the fitting on the steering gearbox. Dirty Dingo makes a smaller pulleys that works great. 

Also the OEM steering reservoir will need some creative mounting, I flattened the bracket and squeezed it in the same area just rotated. 

This photo is old and has different belt routing, but you see what I mean about the steering pulley.

 

[88mjsally]

35 minutes ago, Comanche SS said:

Probably the same kit I went with from ICT.

If so, the power steering pulley will be too close to the fitting on the steering gearbox. Dirty Dingo makes a smaller pulleys that works great. 

Also the OEM steering reservoir will need some creative mounting, I flattened the bracket and squeezed it in the same area just rotated. 

This photo is old and has different belt routing, but you see what I mean about the steering pulley.

 

Looks similar but my idler pulley is lower and I don’t think the oem steering reservoir will be an issue. Clears the hood fine. I have to get another smaller pulley but otherwise I think it’ll work. 
 

This is just mocked up but it seems to fit pretty well overall. Going to try the Jeep pulley as that’s what my buddy used in his xj ls swap and it seemed to work

[Comanche SS]

16 hours ago, 88mjsally said:

Looks similar but my idler pulley is lower and I don’t think the oem steering reservoir will be an issue. Clears the hood fine. I have to get another smaller pulley but otherwise I think it’ll work. 
 

This is just mocked up but it seems to fit pretty well overall. Going to try the Jeep pulley as that’s what my buddy used in his xj ls swap and it seemed to work

Sweet, same bracket kit I just had modified mine for fitment. 

Looks like you are in good shape.

[88mjsally]

Making some good progress this weekend. Got the fuel injectors and rails on. The wiring harness is mostly finished and hooked up. Jeep power steering pump pulley is on the corvette pump. Headers and collectors are bolted on. Waiting on a few more little parts then the big stuff left is the cooling system, fuel system, exhaust, driveshafts and tuning. Sadly the trans started leaking from the output so I’m also going to have to pull the transfercase off to fix that

[88mjsally]

One sucky leak to fix. At least it started leaking before I had the driveshafts back in. I got the new seal in, and I’ll put a transfer case back in tomorrow. Can’t decide if I want to put the rebuilt one back in or the one that I already had in it. The trans fluid didn’t look great either but hopefully it’s okay. It was milky but let’s hope that’s from me pressure washing it. I don’t have it in me to pull the trans back out at the moment and it seemed to shift okay driving around the house

[88mjsally]

Got the rebuilt transfer case installed today. I thought I had the shifter figured out but then I test fit the console and it wasn’t going to work. Tried to heat it up and bend it but ended up breaking the threads off so went back to the drawing board. Turns out the zj ax15 shifter is set back further than an xj so it actually fits pretty decent and should let me run the oem console and shift boot. Test fit the new radiator too. Ended up just going with a stock brass/ copper one and I’ll have to get creative with the hoses. Hopefully it will keep it cool enough